2:1 So I decided not to return to you myself and cause more sorrow.

2:2 After all, if I make you sad, who will cheer me up, if not those I would be making sad?

2:3 And this is why I wrote to you, so that I wouldn’t have to come and be saddened by those I should have been celebrating with. But I am confident in all of you, who are my happiness.

2:4 I wrote to you with a very heavy heart and through many tears, not to make you sad but so that you will know the abounding love I have for you.

2:5 Yet if that person has caused sorrow, it wasn’t just me they made sad but all of you— and I’m not exaggerating.

2:6 The discipline administered by the majority of you was enough for him.

2:7 So now, turn around and show him mercy and consolation, so that he will not be consumed by extreme sorrow.

2:8 Therefore I plead with you to affirm him in love.

2:9 Now I’m also writing this to test you and see whether or not you are paying attention to everything I told you.

2:10 If you have granted him mercy then so have I, for whatever there was to grant, I did so through you in the presence of the Anointed.

2:11 This way the Adversary will have no way to stake a false claim on us, for we are not ignorant of his scheming.

2:12 When I arrived in Troas the Master opened a door for me for the Gospel of the Anointed.

2:13 But I had no relief in my spirit because I could not find my brother Titus, so I left them and went to Macedonia.

2:14 Now thank God, the one who always grants us victory with the Anointed! He spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him through us everywhere,

2:15 for we are the fragrance of God— both to those who are being saved and those who are being destroyed.

2:16 To the latter we are the stench of impending death, but to the former we are the fragrance of promised life. But who is up to the task?

2:17 For we are not like most people who peddle the Word of God, but instead we are sincere because we speak of God and from God with the Anointed.